A brave teacher in Monterrey, Mexico, who sang with her kindergartners to keep them calm during a drug shoot-out outside her school, has gained worldwide attention since the video of the episode went viral over the weekend.Last Friday, Martha Rivera Alanis told her 15 pupils to place their faces on the floor, and repeated over and over again that everything was going to be fine. While gunmen shot and killed five people at a taxi stand nearby, Rivera led her students in a Spanish-language version of a song from the TV show "Barney and Friends." They sang about chocolate raindrops, until the shootout finally ended.
Rivera recorded part of the encounter with her cell-phone video camera, and the powerful footage of her young students' trustingly following her instructions quickly went viral. (You can watch the video below.) She uploaded the clip to her personal Twitter account, and then a local news station found it and put it on YouTube.
Incredibly, the 1.2-minute clip has already been viewed more than a million times, and the story of her bravery traveled far outside her northern Mexican hometown to the UK's Guardian newspaper, Al Jazeera and dozens of U.S. newspapers and blogs. You can watch the AP report of the story below:
Locally as well, Rivera has become something of a star. The Nuevo Leon state government awarded her with a medal for "civic courage" this week, and the mayor of Monterrey also recognized her bravery.
The incident has highlighted the effect of Mexico's bloody drug war on children, whom experts say are likely to experience trauma from the constant fear of violence. More than 35,000 people have died since Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared war on the cartels in 2006. In Monterrey, the Gulf and Zeta cartels fight over turf and their drug smuggling routes into the United States, as the Los Angeles Times reports. Though one of the country's richest cities and once thought to be among its safest, Monterrey has been caught in a"spiral of violence" spurred by the drug wars, the BBC reported.
Rivera and her young charges frequently prepare their plans to stay safe if they are caught in the crossfire, she told reporters.
"We do drills constantly, because the area where we are is a high-risk zone," she said.
The 33-year-old teacher and mother of two has been responding to questions about the incident on her Twitter account. She replied to one user who criticized her for taking the video by saying, "The video was uploaded by a third party, I don't seek to profit from the children's fear." She also wrote that she wasn't after fame or recognition with the video, she just wanted to "show our reality." She insists she was not acting heroically, and was just doing her job.
Hundreds of people have wished her well on Twitter. "Congratulations on your valor and your courage ... your example renews my faith in humanity," one user wrote. Another person thanked her her for taking care of the children, "the hope for a better Mexico." Some English-language speakers have endearingly tried to congratulate her in Spanish, apologizing for their lack of fluency.
She told a local reporter that she and the other teachers have to make monthly reports on security in the school, which inspired her to tape the incident. "The only way to capture it was the video, so I took out my phone and took advantage of the moment," she said. She told parents to trust their children's teachers to keep them safe. "There are hundreds of teachers who would do the same thing I did," she told the reporter.
(Rivera with Monterrey Mayor Fernando Larrazabal Bretón: City of Monterrey)
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